New wave films are considered to be the revolution of cinema and the modernisation of classic cinema rules. This can be seen through the French New Wave and The Dogme Movement. Each of these movements challenged the rules for cinema that had been around for years, and developed new rules and styles for film making. New waves illustrate these new ideas in different ways, using narrative as a secondary element of appealing to audience and therefore using visual techniques as the main element.
The Dogme Movement was a vow of chastity set up to create new rules of cinema and to re-evaluate and challenge the effect and essence of film making. This vow of chastity consisted of 10 rules including; shooting must be done on location, genre movies are not acceptable, the director must not be credited, optical work and filters are not allowed, the camera must be hand held, no superficial action and special lighting is not acceptable. The Dogme Movement was set up by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and films that were made to fit this set of rules include; The Idiots, Cabin Fever and Festen (also known as The Celebration.)
The narrative and subject matters are somewhat challenging and controversial which is effective to contributing to the ideology of breaking traditional film narratives. The camera techniques are an important part of these films and the use of natural lighting shows a sense of realism. This relates and incorporates the rules of the Dogme manifesto, special lighting was not allowed and therefore the lighting had to be already on location. This makes the whole film appear to be a home movie, from the natural lighting to the shaky camera technique.
French new wave was very significant to cinema as it explored new ways of creating films using different narratives, editing and camera techniques. An important director of these films is Jean-Luc Godard.
The use of editing Godard used made the audience aware that they are watching a film; Godard tried to make this obvious throughout his films. Jump cutting is employed to disorientate the audience making them pay attention and therefore aware that the film is not real life. However, his films are also trying to represent real life with the lack of important dialogue, and the lingering camera shots. Godard frequently breaks the 180 degree rule which again, is a technique used to disorientate the audience and show the false reality represented in the film.
All of these techniques and Godard’s techniques to keep the audience aware of the false reality of film are there for a reason. Usually in film, the audience becomes absorbed into the narrative of a film and stops paying complete attention to detail and to the fact the film isn’t real. It relates to the belief that art imitates life, and life imitates art. Art is just a representation of real life, and although it can be very realistic it is still never real.
This overall shows that New Waves are significant to the way in which film making was revolutionised.
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